Five questions to ask when choosing a location platform

Radar is a location platform for mobile apps. But what is a location platform, and how should you choose one?

Location platforms are an emerging category of enterprise technology. They help product, engineering, and growth teams collect, store, analyze, and act on location data.

Below, we've assembled the top questions that you should ask when choosing a location or geofencing platform.

1. Does the platform allow you to create custom geofences?

If so, how? Via bulk import, an API, or a dashboard? Can you create both circle and polygon geofences? Can you set custom metadata that maps to your database? Is there a limit to the number of geofences you can create? Are stop detection or dwell events supported?

Radar allows you to create an unlimited number of circle and polygon geofences representing custom places or regions. You can create geofences via bulk import, the API, and the dashboard, and you can set custom metadata that maps to your database. Radar also supports stop detection, and can wait until a user stops in a geofence to generate a geofence entry event.

2. Does the platform integrate with other platforms that you use?

If so, are the integrations well-documented and well-supported? Does the platform support webhooks for custom integrations? Are customers using these integrations successfully?

Radar integrates directly with mParticle, Segment, Braze, Yext, and Urban Airship. Through mParticle and Segment, Radar integrates with hundreds of other platforms, including Amplitude, Mixpanel, and Amazon Redshift. Radar also supports webhooks for custom integrations. Multiple large customers are using these integrations successfully in production.

3. Does the platform have an adjacent ad tech business?

If so, do they resell your data or use it for retargeting or attribution? Do they offer lower pricing to incentivize such data sharing?

Radar is not an ad tech company, we do not resell your data, and we do not play pricing games to incentivize data sharing.

4. Is the platform flexible and developer-friendly?

Does the platform prescribe specific use cases, or is it flexible? Are the SDK and API well-documented, well-supported, and developer-friendly? Is the SDK battery efficient, and are settings a black box or customizable? Does the dashboard help you visualize the data you collect?

Radar supports any use case, from shopping to travel to on-demand. The SDK and API are well-documented and well-supported, designed to integrate seamlessly with your app. The SDK achieves a balance of accuracy, reliability, responsiveness, and battery efficiency suitable for most use cases, and the Radar team will work with you to customize settings if needed. Finally, the Radar dashboard helps you visualize the data you collect, supporting both diagnostics and analytics.

5. Does the platform integrate with a place database?

If so, which one(s)? Which apps does that place database power? How many places are supported globally? How many categories and chains are supported?

Radar is integrated with Facebook Places, the same place database that powers Facebook and Instagram, with over 140 million places globally. We also ingest and curate place data from other sources, providing the most comprehensive view of the world available in market. Radar supports hundreds of categories and thousands of chains.

We hope that these questions will help you choose the location platform that is right for you.

Still have questions? Contact our sales team. We'd love to hear more about what you're building.